


Subtlety

by sorasan0000



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorasan0000/pseuds/sorasan0000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ju-doh and Suwon are both staff on the shoujo manga department, but Ju-doh being new to the medium finds himself frustrated with work. Suwon, hearing about the issue, sets out to help him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subtlety

“A shoujo creator has one job: to make the hearts of their readers flutter. Remember, the target audience of our magazine is middle school girls. Creators must tap into their desires, their fantasies, their wishes, their dreams, and then craft them. It is our job to help them do the best job they can and bring those creations to the outside world.”

Ju-doh, a fairly new editor to the magazine staff, listened intently to the words of his bubbly, cheerful boss. He did, however, feel a knot gripping at his insides and his face flushed with the unresolved frustration of his new positon.  Now he knew why the chief had called out specifically to him and nearly fell into the trap of rolling his eyes.

“That being said, Ju-doh,” Editor Il laughed and coughed, “I mean, Mr.Han-excuse me!”

“Il, please just get to the point,” Ju-doh snapped.

Il sighed and flipped through a pile of papers on his desk, all the while refusing the call to talk. The sound of flipping papers and the ticking of the clock on the wall were the only sounds that echoed in the spacious room, with it being close to 8 p.m. and having nobody but the two of them left from the workday. The faint smell of chocolate from the lunch party still drifted from the direction of Il’s desk, and it made Ju-doh feel like leaving and texting his evasive boss in favor of going home and getting away from that horrible smell.

“Well,” Il drifted in tone, “I’ve overlooked the work of your current assignment, and she seems to have a problem with dialogue placement and romantic development. Rather, she tells much more often than she shows, and that can get boring to the young readers. The readers are getting restless with the lack of romance, too. There’s too much fighting.”

Ju-doh ran his fingertip through the compiled books on his own desk and grabbed the work in question. It was a quaint comic clearly done by someone with less experience, but he found the pilot chapter charming. It was about a girl who grew up in the slums an orphan and had to learn to defend herself growing up.

He flipped through the first volume he was assigned to work on, which was volume six, and nodded. There were certain parts he knew he should have looked at more closely, but to be called out on it was humiliating. He may have been new to girls’ comics, but he had been editing for more than ten years.

“You’ve been editing for around ten years, Ju-doh.” Il chimed in as if he could read his mind. “As her assigned editor, you should give her that advice and give her tips on how to improve that. “

“All right,” Ju-doh grit his teeth and breathed before continuing, “I’ll be more careful. Can I go home now?”

Il sighed and casually blew him off with a hand gesture, something he would never do in an otherwise public place with one of his junior co-workers. However, he had one more thing to say as Ju-doh was buttoning up his dark blue jacket.

“Also, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you right now, but it’s trailing in the magazine ranking.” He smiled from ear to ear and waved. “You may now be excused.”

****

He grumbled as he climbed the stairs to his apartment on the third floor. The reason he was frustrated with the job was because he didn’t know a thing about romance in this medium, and he had been out of practice with this romance business. That flowery, mushy talk that made up these so-called “dreams” and “fantasies” were far removed from him. How was he supposed to tap into the desires of young girls’ romantic desires anyway?

He heard footsteps quickly making their way up the staircase behind him, but he had no need to wonder who they belonged to. He continued watching his step before reaching the top of the third staircase and zoomed to unlock his door before the other caught up.

As soon as the door was unlocked, he flung it open and shut it just as frantically. However, just as he had slipped his shoes off and started unbuttoning his jacket, he heard a soft knock behind him. He wasn’t going to answer it, he wasn’t going to answer it, not this time, he wasn’t going to answer it having not tidied himself up—but of course he answered it.

“Good evening!” Suwon chimed, standing tall with his hands behind his back.

Ju-doh found he didn’t even have the energy to hiss between his teeth, so he sighed and rubbed the side of his head, uttering a greeting back. Editor Il’s nephew was like him in so many ways, except he had youth on his side, and that somehow made him that much more overwhelming. He had skills as a young editor and even had the honor of having one of his assigned works adapted into a live action movie recently. Getting so much as a drama CD adaptation was something Ju-doh aspired for, but he had never actually achieved that for any of his assigned works.

Suwon hummed and held out a pile of documents with one hand, coaxing him to take them off his hands. “I’m giving these to you to borrow.”

Ju-doh sluggishly took them and flipped through page after page of photocopied manuscripts of older series. Some of the artwork styles looked as old as thirty years old, and some pages were nearly covered in red markings. He had worked with references like these during his previous editing job, but he hadn’t thought about doing the same with his current job.  Why didn’t he think of it before?

“I heard you talking with Keishuk from the sales team about being clueless about romance in this medium. These are what helped me get the hang of editing. I had real life examples to observe to help me along, though,” he continued on smiling, peering upward to the left as if remembering something fond.

Ju-doh straightened the pages and thanked him. After a frustrating evening, ending the day with this kind of help was calming, but the young person who brought it to him was still standing there, not having excused himself. After several seconds of awkward silence, he was about to ask what more he wanted, but he saw him reveal a plastic bag from behind him.

“It’s getting late and I know you’re settling in, but I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner together.”

Ju-doh was surprised. He had never offered something like this before. Wondering what reason he had for it, he simply smiled and said a home cooked meal with company was the best. He couldn’t argue with that. He allowed him inside, showing him the locations of various kitchen tools before retiring to clean himself up.  From the scent of fresh soap he caught from Suwon, he figured he had already done the same before inviting himself over.

****

The smell of seasoned, sautéed beef mixed with the marinated smell of minced onion and garlic, soy mixed with sugar, water, and honey filled every corner of the house. The extra steam from the cooking during late Spring was bothersome at most, but having something other than a microwaveable meal for once was worth it. Once Suwon noticed he was back from washing up, he nodded and began working on the instant rice. With that, dinner would be ready in a matter of minutes.

For someone who came from a wealthy family, he didn’t seem like the type to know how to make something that looked and smelled decent, let alone looked and smelled delicious. Grabbing a can of cold green tea, he slouched against the back of the sofa and watched Suwon go back and forth between finishing up the meat with green onion and mushrooms and tending to the rice. The curiosity rumbled closer to the forefront of his mind, but it shouldn’t have come at such a surprise. The man was already 25 years old and had been living on his own during college. It really made sense once he took that into account.

His attention shifted to the pile of reference papers on the low table in front of him. Putting his drink down, he flipped through them and stopped on one particular page that appeared to be completely colored red. He recognized the artwork to be that of a very well-known creator from fifteen years ago, and he let it sink in that even the most successful creators had an editor to help them polish their work. It was a passion he once felt, but being in the business for as long as he had been had turned it into nothing more than the same old, same old. Suwon probably still had that passion, though Il being as old as he was also had that very same passion. He scoffed at himself internally, knowing it was probably his own problem.

A dish full of the finished goods was placed in front of him, distracting him from his focus. He looked up to see a calm smile and bright eyes beaming from a job well done. Suwon held his own plate as he sat down on the next sofa cushion and leaned forward to join him in looking at the reference manuscripts.

“What is it you’re finding the most difficult about editing shoujo?” Suwon asked.

Ju-doh opened his mouth and began to say something but then trailed off. Editor Il had said his client’s work lacked romantic passion, but as long as her work was running in a girls’ comic serialization, what did that matter? It may have focused a lot on friendship, the occasional fighting here and there, but it had the art, the eye candy, the occasional romantic fluff, and a steady story flow as far as he could see. He couldn’t have possibly been talking about taking the romance into a more risqué direction. This magazine was aimed at middle schoolers, after all.

Then again, the things his clients had been able to get away with in the boys’ comic magazine sometimes made him want to be hospitalized with an ulcer.

“I guess finding a balance between romance and the rest of the story is something I still don’t understand. It’s possible my client is having the same problem, so if I could at least help give her tips on which direction to go…” he trailed and left Suwon to pick up on the rest.

Suwon took a bite of his food and lifted a pointer finger while chewing quickly and swallowing. He kept himself in the same position before continuing his meal and relaxing against the back of the sofa. Ju-doh felt a sense of anticlimactic build up and turned back to his own food irritated. Discussing work related matters during dinner wasn’t ideal anyway, he supposed. He was sure to develop an ulcer doing that.

Finishing his first helping, Suwon set the plate down on the table in front of them and walked toward the bookshelf, pulling out a random volume of the comic Ju-doh was having problems with. After sitting back down and skimming it, he put it down and patiently waited for Ju-doh to finish. Feeling as if he was imposing on Suwon’s help, he gulped down the last of it with his drink and turned his head.

“It’s true that this series didn’t take off with the most popular votes in the surveys and it still dwindles in rankings even seven volumes in, but I think it has potential.” Suwon opened the volume he picked out and pointed to several pages that were covered in walls of text. “This was one of the problems my uncle pointed out, right?”

Ju-doh nodded and tried to quell the knot in his gut. Now was not the time to feel the humiliation of not helping the creator get around that. He had to stay calm. This was being done in order to improve and help his clients.

“The creator should keep all of this in mind and then introduce it through action rather than narration. Instead of narrating this chapter as if it were being told from a future standpoint completely throughout, the flow would have worked just as well without it. It stands out as off because there isn’t a single other chapter that has this kind of narrative flow.”

Ju-doh remembered a page he had seen in the reference pages and quickly flipped through to find it. Once he got to the page, he realized several more after it were the same with red marks. All of the narration had been crossed out.

“Do you think our archives have the final printed form for this? It looks too old for bookstores to have it.”

Suwon nodded and then continued flipping through the pages. He tapped a spot with his thumb and then pointed out the next “issue”, if Ju-doh could call it that.

“And then there’s this scene. The hug.”

Ju-doh peered down and saw what Suwon was talking about. It was a pivotal moment in the main heroine’s development as far as her relationship with the male lead was concerned. At least as far as romance was concerned. Ju-doh sat in silence for several seconds before looking at Suwon and seeing the raised brow.

“What? It’s romantic, right?”

“It’s a mere glass of water after three days of roaming in the desert.”

Ju-doh looked at it again and felt that knot grow tighter. Was he saying that a hug wasn’t enough? Anything beyond that was too soon for the characters!

“Not only that, but that’s all it is. For all the narration and dialogue overload that happened several chapters back, there is absolutely nothing conveying their feelings here. It’s not even being conveyed through the art. Look, there’s an example of a real shoujo hug somewhere in here.” Suwon grabbed the references and flipped until he found the right one.

 It was from another famous work which Ju-doh remembered seeing in the bookstore as a college student. It was one of the magazine’s best sellers, from what he could tell from the store display at the time. Taking the pages into his hand, he saw the rough details that the two-page spread offered. The two characters embraced as if their lives hung in the balance of each other. The swiftness of their movements created a windy flow that displayed their desperation, her hair flowing behind her as his flowed forward from the impact. The screentone had not been added to this page, but seeing the rough draft, especially in sketch form, was beautiful.

“This hug,” Suwon said, pointing at the page in the volume, “happened after the two had gone through a dangerous situation. The readers were expecting a big reunion. Can you imagine getting all that tension and then getting a rigid hug that didn’t even show the characters up close?”

Ju-doh cringed and gave the spread back. “I personally think there’s beauty in quaintness. What was going through my mind when I oversaw this was that the tension had been so high for far too many chapters that when it came to the reunion, a simple hug was all that was needed. Making an over-the-top hug could have worked once I think about it now, but at the time I thought it fit. Everything was fine in the world. They were both safe and in each other’s arms. That’s all that mattered. What they were feeling, how they looked, that could have been left up to the imagination.”

Suwon sat quietly as he absorbed the new take on the scene and hummed, flipping back and forth between the page and the next several times. He nodded and closed the book.

“I like the simplistic approach you had. I can imagine the creator wanted to convey the same thing and you didn’t want to intrude on her creative processes. For a simplistic approach, I recommend a close-up on the faces, maybe some blush, and maybe even some tears. Remember, our magazine’s job is to bring to life the fluttering hearts of young girls everywhere reading it.”

It pinged in Ju-doh’s mind with those words. He rested his chin on the palm of his hand and sighed. So in the end, that was what it was about.

Suwon relaxed and lifted the remote, tuning in to the nightly news. Though he seemed focused solely on that, the conversation he brought up revealed he was anything but.

“So you like subtle romance but nothing over the top?”

Ju-doh grumbled and entwined his fingers together. He didn’t want to go into details about his romantic life or past relationships, but it was a simple enough question, to which he confirmed.

“Mind telling or showing what that means?”

Ju-doh breathed out and recalled anything he could use as an example. The longest relationship he had been in lasted for five years, but the two naturally drifted away with their own workloads and family pressure. How did they first start out? He couldn’t even remember.  Surely with his time spent on work all this time, anything he possibly considered romantic was probably out of touch with the younger generation. Or even out of touch with himself.

“Things like light kisses on the cheek when one or the other is leaving for the day, the one who usually cooks dinner coming home to a meal already prepared, one resting their head on the other’s shoulder or lap, and…” Ju-doh paused as he noticed Suwon staring intently from the side.

Suwon’s face flushed lightly as he quickly turned away, and Ju-doh zipped his lips shut as he leaned over in his direction. “Since we’re on the topic of sharing time, what about you?”

Suwon continued facing away, though Ju-doh swore he could feel the heat radiating from his general direction. He wanted to crack a smirk, but he felt like that would bring more trouble than entertainment if caught.

“It’s just,” Suwon paused, “I just think it will be of help to you to bring out your romantic side for perspective. Subtle is nice.”

He was avoiding the question. Of course. Though it was kind of him to go that far to help him. He wasn’t a newbie in the editing business, so he figured getting in touch with the basics of romance he once practiced would help him catch up in this yet unfamiliar medium.

He stood and took both plates to the sink and prepared to wash them, with Suwon coming up next to him with a dry cloth.

“You haven’t done them in a while, huh?” Suwon chuckled.

Ju-doh snorted in agreement and caught a glimpse of Suwon’s composure. His face was even redder than before, but his composure was calmer, as if he had reached some sort of inner resolve and was in the middle of calming down. Staring down the pile he knew he had to take care of sooner or later, he got started.

The news served as nothing more than background noise at that point, with the overpowering sound of the facet running and dishes clanging. Ju-doh also noticed that whenever he put a dish in the rinsing side, his visitor would brush his hand lightly against his own. It was light and could be mistaken as a mistake, but once it happened one too many times for it to be a coincidence, he sparked the conversation.

“So now are you trying to get in touch with something more subtle?”

Suwon stumbled in murmuring and smiled ear to ear. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Ju-doh let go of the cup in his hand and lightly clasped it over Suwon’s, which still held the now dampened cloth in its grasp. Everything came to a standstill without a second’s notice, and with Ju-doh turning off the facet for the moment, the only thing they should have been able to hear was the TV, yet even that fell on mute ears.

Ju-doh didn’t expect anything when it came to whatever was coming next. He expected Suwon to blow it off because they were still on the subject of work, but instead he found the younger man leaning in and resting his head against his shoulder. The heat he could feel against himself wasn’t that of the steam from the water for sure. He slipped the clasped hand away and upon the other’s shoulder, pulling him closer.

“You’re a sneaky one.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

“You never answered my question about what you considered romantic.”

Suwon shifted back upright and turned the facet back on. His smile was much more curved, as if at any moment he would burst into either laughter, revealing it to be a joke, or a giddy smile from happiness he couldn’t control. Or both, really. Sometimes he confused him.

“You do realize this will need to be kept on the down low, right? Who knows what your uncle will do if he finds out.” He had been fired from his previous job for insubordination. He didn’t need a second strike from a boss on his record. Besides that, he recalled his previous relationship and the unfortunate stress that caused. One wrong move this time, and he would swear off relationships for as long as he lived, he swore to Hiryuu on High.

“I actually don’t think my uncle will mind. Still, if that is what you want for now, I’ll abide by it.”

As soon as the dishes were done, Suwon took his leave. He left the reference papers behind for Ju-doh just in case he wanted to focus on it further into the night. Ju-doh, however, felt exhausted not only from the workday but also from the evening he found himself in an official relationship after years of swearing off one. This relationship posed its own potential problems, but he wanted to stop being so critical and have hope for things to work out.

As he watched Suwon’s car pull out and drive away, he made a small wish in his heart for him to return home safely and content for the next day to arrive.

****

“A fair?” Editor Il asked with intrigue.

“Yes. I have the sales numbers from the sales department to prove that this series sells decently even with the lower survey rankings. It’s overshadowed by other popular series in the magazine, but all it needs is a bit of attention.”

Il skimmed through the report he was handed and nodded in agreement. “Indeed. It seems to hold its own with non-magazine readers, I suppose. What do you have in mind for the fair?”

“Get a well-renowned writer to endorse the work. Create an official website for it. Offer a book signing.” Ju-doh answered promptly and confidently.

“Good ideas. We have the sales numbers to help support something like that for the next department meeting. Good job.”

Ju-doh knew it probably wasn’t the case, but he felt a bit of patronizing from his tone. He knew by that point that Il had a preference against violence in _his_ magazine, but he had been a boys’ comic editor for years, knowing that young girls were part of that audience as well as boys.  If after his efforts to make it more popular it didn’t work, he would concede victory to him. In the meantime, he was willing to take that risk.

“You had best not get on my bad side, Mr.Han,” Il said with a smile.

Ju-doh felt his confidence plummet. There it was again. That sense that Il could read his mind.

“Oh well, I think you two will make it just fine.”

Wait—when—

“Don’t worry. One glance at you two this morning said enough. I know my nephew very well, and no matter how sneaky he is, I know.”

Ju-doh sighed in relief, feeling guilty that for a second he thought Suwon had betrayed his trust already. In this case, it was just this jolly old man being way too clever. Thank goodness he was an understanding individual in this case.

“Mr.Han,” Suwon hollered from the floor’s lobby, “we’re going to lunch! Do you want to come along?”

Ju-doh waved and hollered back, agreeing to come along. Glancing back at Il, who nodded, he excused himself and walked into the light—the bright, present light that seemed to pull him in and illuminate his path.


End file.
